Jr tennis champion held for plotting boyfriend’s kidnap

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A former junior national tennis champion and ITF-ranked player was arrested on Wednesday in connection with the kidnap and assault of a 21-year-old man. Two others were also arrested.

Chennai:

Twenty-year-old Vasavi Ganesan, who was ranked 1890 in the ITF Circuit-2017 and has participated in the ITF Junior Tennis Championship in Chennai, lives in the US and had come to Chennai on May 6 and stayed at a hotel in Kilpauk. The following day, she met her boyfriend K Navith Ahmed, a BCom graduate at a park here when an argument broke out between the two of them. During the fight, Navith allegedly snatched Vasavi’s phone and hit her on the head with his helmet.

On May 9, when Navith was returning home on a bike at 11.15 pm, he was intercepted by a gang. Two of them threatened him at knife point and took his bike away. “They then made him sit on their bike while the others followed them on another two-wheeler. The men allegedly assaulted him and robbed him of a wristwatch and mobile phone. They also demanded Rs 2 lakh ransom to release him. But since Navith’s friends were not ready to pay, the men fled. Police found that Vasavi had asked her friends to kidnap and assault Navith for taking her phone and attacking her. All have been remanded to judicial custody.

Though the police initially let off tennis player Vasavi Ganesan after interrogation in connection with kidnap case, she was arrested after the police found she was following her friends Bhaskar, Saravanan and Basha when they kidnapped Navith and knew about the incident.

During investigation, Vasavi claimed that she had only asked her friends to retrieve her phone from Navith. “As she did not inform the police about the incident, she was also arrested under the same sections as her friends,” a police officer said. After he was let off on Friday (May 10), Navith informed his parents about the incident and a formal complaint was lodged with the TP Chathiram police.

On May 11, the police traced the two-wheeler that was used for the kidnap and identified the suspect as S Bhaskar (26), a resident of Velachery and the son of woman head constable Sasthirakani attached to the Vadapalani All-Women Police Station. Based on his inputs Saravanan and Basha were arrested in the subsequent days. On Tuesday, Vasavi and two more men, identified as Gokul from Nungambakkam and Abishek from Arumbakkam, were arrested. Vasavi, who is settled in the US with parents, often visits Chennai to participate in badminton tournaments. She got introduced to Navith two years ago through common friends in Loyola College, where Navith was pursuing B Com.